#chemical comparisons

[er-cryptid]

Vapor Pressure and Intermolecular Forces - Ex. 2

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[asmogorna]

peace at last

someone said they look similar and i thought it was lovely

[gerardpilled]

Gerard's Newark Boots as photographed by Matt Bishop

[sunnylemonss]

there's no higher betrayal than finding out your favorite book has been made into a movie and the movie turns out to be absolute garbage

[apuff]

mama took "war is hell" too literally

[prettygirlgerard]

Emergency Contact - Pierce the Veil / F.T.W.W - My Chemical Romance

[andoutofharm]

all we are, all we are is bullets, i mean this // hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on

demolition lovers (my chemical romance) vs. twin skeletons (fall out boy)

[chiralitree]

Thinking about my coworker who had never heard of My Chemical Romance. Like I'm genuinely confused how that happens. I get not everyone was a depressed (closeted) queer emo kid at some point in their life but that'd be like saying you've never heard of Taylor Swift because you don't listen to pop music. Genuinely cannot wrap my head around this.

[bitchhiker]

"Hooper’s Hitchhiker is a nightmarish figure, too grotesque to be pitiable, a displaced slaughterhouse worker who carries photographs of steers he has killed with a sledgehammer. What is most remarkable is the fascination that he inspires in Franklin, who engages in a spirited conversation with him about the craft of killing steers: the sledgehammer versus the pneumatic gun. Franklin acknowledges a direct connection with the Hitchhiker—his own grandfather used to send his steers to the Hitchhiker’s slaughterhouse. And even more telling, Franklin has an uncle who works in one. Franklin and the Hitchhiker also discover that they share an enthusiasm for head cheese. After the Hitchhiker demonstrates his bravado by laughing while using Franklin’s knife to cut open his palm, Franklin finds himself admiring the act—even though the Hitchhiker also cuts Franklin’s arm with his knife, against Franklin’s will. Although the two do not exchange blood, the corresponding cuts via the shared knife suggest blood brotherhood. And when the group forcibly puts the Hitchhiker out of the van, he smears its side with his bloody palm, marking it. Later when the van reaches the family homestead, Franklin gazes ruefully at the bloody mark and says, 'I bet it’s about me.'"

The Demythologizing of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Jeff Jeske

[spooky-nuke]

It's Not a Fashion Statement, It's a Deathwish - MCR // Work Song - Hozier

[frnkiebby]

THE FUNNY ONE IS BACK

i stg this fucking man~🎃

[this-is-chaos-magick]

One of my greatest fear is Wanda Maximoff coming back to life with.....an orange 👹 hair still...like please let it go marvel... please brunette Wanda with a curly hair come to me 🙏🏼🙏🏼

[blood-injections]

Mikey Way is literally the human equivalent of the let me do it for you borzois except it’s his whole body. Stretch him infinitely he can go anywhere.

[insomnianightss]

Love from the other side - fob//nanana - mcr

This is the only thing I could think about

[ckret2]

@actuallyaltaria said: You could probably get away with something newer still like Steven Universe! They sing about their feelings!

This is gonna be a long post because every time I go "man it sucks I can't mention [some kids' cartoon] lmao" I get multiple people trying to suggest ways I can include some kids' cartoon, so I think I need to explain myself.

"Use Steven Universe instead" is a solution if you're assuming I'm coming from a position of "my ACTUAL GOAL is to reference a TV show, any TV show, that people know about, I'm just struggling to find one that's universally familiar." So let me clarify: my "alas, if only everybody knew the plot of Rainbow Brite" theatrics are me being funny for my own entertainment.

I want, very specifically, to NOT reference a real TV show, no matter how well-known it is.

I've mentioned before that I don't want any part of this fic to be dependent upon the audience knowing some other series. I'm extremely firm on this. It would be alienating to any readers who aren't familiar with the property, it would be alienating to readers who ARE familiar with the property but dislike it, it would be distracting to people who know the property TOO well—and it doesn't fit into the Gravity Falls universe.

Gravity Falls doesn't make references to real world pop culture! The hit rap song of the summer isn't attributed to a known rapper like Lil Jon or Snoop Dogg, it's Lil Bigg Dawggg. The biggest boy band isn't NSYNC, it's Sev'ral Timez. There's no Dungeons & Dragons; there's Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons. There's no Fun Dip, there's Smile Dip. The master of claymation isn't Ray Harryhausen, it's Harry Claymore. Hoo-Ha Owl substitutes for Chuck E. Cheese, Fight Fighters for Street Fighters, BABBA for ABBA... for Journal 3 they even made up a dimension named Exwhylia so that they could avoid canonically mentioning Flatland.

Almost every song, show, cartoon, band, movie, food product, chain business, or other brand name that gets mentioned in Gravity Falls is either a parody of a specific real-world equivalent or a broader parody of a whole category of pop culture.

In a universe where some of Mabel's favorite series are Believe in Yourself and Dream Boy High, it would be weird and jarring to throw in something real like Care Bears.

Honestly—putting my jokes about forcing all of tumblr to watch a cartoon aside—gun to my head if I was forced to include a reference to a real world cartoon, I'd probably be less likely to use Steven Universe than something like Care Bears or Rainbow Brite. Steven Universe would be even MORE jarring. Like, most of the people who are inclined to read Gravity Falls fanfics probably haven't seen Rainbow Brite, so—even though it still has the "this is a Real Thing so it feels like you're expected to know about it" stigma that adding ANY real thing to the fic would have—it's at least is on equal footing with Believe in Yourself and Dream Boy High in that it's still the name of something distant and unfamiliar to most readers, and therefore I could say anything I wanted about it and most people would be like "sure, okay."

On the other hand, Steven Universe? This is tumblr. SU and GF are plot-driven kids' sci-fi cartoons about kids caught in supernatural shenanigans and complicated family relationships that were airing at the same time. The audience overlap between Gravity Falls and Steven Universe is almost a circle. Anybody who sees Steven Universe get name dropped in a Gravity Falls fic is NOT going to see it as some distant unfamiliar story-within-a-story being introduced as a lighthearted narrative device for a goofy "Mabel thinks showing Bill children cartoons is a valid form of therapy" scene. It's going to be the heavy handed insertion of a MASSIVE fandom that a LOT of readers will already have EXTREMELY STRONG IN-DEPTH OPINIONS about—and any that DON'T have such strong opinions are probably the ones who are sick to death of seeing Steven Universe everywhere and are just gonna be irritated that now, apparently, knowledge of that show is necessary to read this Gravity Falls fanfic??

If I said "Bill thinks he's totally exactly like Rainbow Brite" a few readers would politely chuckle and the rest would wait for me to explain the metaphor and why it matters to the storyline. If I said "Bill thinks he's totally exactly like Rose Quartz" I'd have dropped one hell of a bomb of a hot take into a fic that isn't in the LEAST BIT about any alleged character parallels that might exist between Bill Cipher and Rose Quartz. Anyone who's seen the show will immediately start thinking VERY HARD about the comparison and anybody who HASN'T will assume that, because SU is so big, I'm expecting them to know enough to understand the comparison.

If I were to put either of those comparisons in the fic, the point I would be trying to make is "Mabel makes Bill watch a kid's show hoping it will teach him to be a better person, and is surprised that instead of taking away moral lessons from the viewing, he's concluded he's basically the same as the idealistic young hopeful rebel leader fighting against oppressive conformist forces and protecting the people of earth." My authorial intent would be at least partially drowned out by any reference to another show (especially for people who don't get it), but it would be SUPER drowned out by a reference to an extremely well-known show.

The only way to avoid distorting that authorial intent is to not hinge part of the story on some other show.

So am I melodramatically sighing and lamenting over how tragic it is that I can't directly reference The Last Unicorn or whatever in the fic because it would be so totally perfect and very funny and absolutely has valid narrative parallels to stuff that's gonna happen in the fic? Yeah. But my problem wouldn't be solved if TLU was universally watched, or if I substituted something that is universally watched for TLU, because the root of my problem is that TLU is a real cartoon in the real world.

I accept that the specific comedy that can ONLY come from saying "[character from Show A] is EXACTLY like [character from Show B that's jarringly incongruous with Show A]" is comedy that I'm not going to have in my fic, and I cope with this by comedically kvetching about it.

And I'm gonna make up an imaginary girly 80s cartoon for Mabel to force Bill to watch.

[iridescentdescendant]

baby seasons change but people don't.

(x|x|x|x)